


Growing Up, Moving On

by UnmovingGreatLibrary



Category: Touhou Project
Genre: Family, Gen, Growing Up, Leaving Home, Loss of Parent(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-04-06 06:58:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4212273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnmovingGreatLibrary/pseuds/UnmovingGreatLibrary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The incident resolvers, and the adults who are no longer there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Youmu

Youmu had been standing outside the parlor for most of an hour. She stared at the floor, fidgeting and shifting side to side as she waited. Inside the room, she could hear Yuyuko and the man arguing.

"I didn't sign on to train kids."

"Hmm? Is that a problem?"

"I'm a swordsman." The man snorted through his nose. "Not a babysitter."

"I'm sure she'll be a good pupil. She's very studious for her age."

"Doesn't matter. Not training a kid. Don't like them."

"If you have any problems with her, you can bring her to me.” Even Youmu could hear the strained patience in Yuyuko's voice. “All I ask is for you to train her as well as you can. I'll add five thousand yen to your stipend for the trouble, how does that sound?"

“Not interested.”

"Ah. I wasn't aware that the Konpaku clan was so prosperous that you could turn down work. I suppose this means that the rumors I heard about your gambling debts are wrong. Ah, well..."

More grumbling. The man let out a low, defeated groan. "Bring her in," he finally said. "Let's have a look."

"Wonderful! I'm sure you two will get along. Youmu!" Yuyuko called back toward the door, raising her voice. "Please come in now!"

Youmu gripped the lower hem of her dress and stared at the floor, trying to summon up the courage to move. She was too young to understand everything that they'd discussed, but the man had sounded angry, Bit by bit, she willed her body into motion. She pushed the door open, and stepped into the room.

And, froze as soon as she saw him. Even hidden under layers of earth tone robes, the man was imposing. The only bared skin below his neck were his hands, knobbly, sinewy, calloused things. A single sword hung at crooked angle on his back. His wispy white beard was pulled into a point, and his hair was cut short. His face had a strangely ageless quality to it, but he looked like he was constantly squinting against the light, creasing the flesh at the corner of his eyes.

Most importantly, though: A phantom hanged in the air behind him. It wasn't like the tiny ones that gathered around Yuyuko like moths to a flame. It was a fat, heavy, substantial thing, drifting lazily around his waist. He shifted his weight to peer over her, and it moved along with him, as if tugged along by an invisible string.

He had a phantom half. He was like her.

The man's squinting expression softened in surprise. "Where'd you even _find_ her?"

"It's not nice to talk about her like she isn't here," Yuyuko chided gently. She stepped behind Youmu and rested her hands on the girl's shoulders. "This is Youmu. She's a foundling from the land of the living. Yukari thought she'd be safer growing up away from humans, so she will be living here from now on."

"Nnh. Not many half-phantoms around these days." The man scowled, but started walking a slow circle around Youmu, inspecting her. Youmu shrunk down slightly, but stayed put. If there was one skill she'd perfected, it was how to stay small and quiet around adults. "Got a last name, kid?"

"N-no, sir."

"Figures." He came to a stop, still bent down and squinting at her. "She's scrawny."

"I'll see to it that she eats right from now on," Yuyuko said.

"Probably can't even lift a sword."

"Then she can use a bokken."

The man grumbled under his breath "... if she's going to be living here," he reasoned aloud, "she's going to be a pain in my ass either way. Might as well make the extra money while I'm at it."

"So you'll train her?"

"Eh. Sure, why not."

"Wonderful! Youmu," Yuyuko never spoke harshly to begin with, but her voice always seemed to soften further when addressing Youmu, "This is Youki Konpaku. He'll be training you from now on, okay? Please try to learn from him."

"Yes, ma'am," Youmu said. 

“Just stay quiet and do what I say,” Youki added.

“Y-yes, sir.”

“Youki,” Yuyuko said. “If you make that girl shed a single tear...”

Youki raised an eyebrow. “Then...?”

“Then I will never forgive you. That would be sad, don't you think?”

Youki held Yuyuko's gaze for a moment, then sighed and shook his head. “Yeah, yeah, got it.” His eyes turned toward Youmu. “Come on, kid, let's get started. Better not make me regret this.”

* * *

"Huaaah!"

"Again."

"Hyaaah!"

"Again!”

Youmu flinched, but steeled her expression. Once again, she sank down into a combat stance. Every bead of sweat was a pinprick of cold in the chilly Netherworld air. Her bokken, already too large for her hands, drooped in exertion until she tightened her grip on it. She glared at the space where her imaginary opponent should stand, took a deep breath, and focused her entire will on a single purpose.

“HAAAAH!” Every muscle in her body snapped into motion, and she leapt forward like an arrow. Her spirit flowed into the sword, and it became a part of her, roiling with energy. The entire force of her body drove it through a single slice. When she came to a stop a fraction of a second later, thirty meters across the garden, a ghostly line of white fire hanged behind her. It lingered for an instant, then sublimated away into mist.

The single explosive motion left Youmu gasping for air. It was the only sound in the garden. Then, a single grunt of disapproval broke the silence.

Youmu slumped and turned around. On the other side of the garden, Youki was sitting on the steps of his shack, his traditional spot for these training sessions. Even seated, he looked intimidating: legs spread, elbows propped on the step behind him, Hakurouken laying sheathed across his lap, a fat hand-rolled cigarette drooping from one lip and trailing a wisp of smoke. He shook his head in annoyance and plucked the cigarette from his mouth. “Your form's terrible,” he said, and ground the cigarette into a brown smear against the step. Using Hakurouken's scabbard as a cane, he pushed himself to standing with a soft sigh of exertion and unsheathed the sword.

After months of training, Youmu was accustomed enough to this chain of events to know what came next. She stepped aside, and studied Youki's movements. Where he'd barely been able to stand up moments ago, his motions now were measured and deliberate. He lowered the sword to his side and crouched down. Like a coiled spring, his entire body was tensed and prepared to put its energy into a single motion.

“HOAH!” It was a single, sharp sound straight from Youki's diaphragm, loud enough that Youmu could feel it across the garden. He moved so quickly that she didn't even see a blur. One moment, he was standing on the other side of the garden. The next, he was in front of her, and a line of roiling energy hanged in the air behind him, like a gash in the side of the universe. In the blink of an eye, a shockwave traveled down its length and exploded outward, unraveling it in a violent eruption of energy.

Youmu felt a rush of shame at her own inability to repeat the display... but it was overwhelmed by amazement. Streamers of ghostly energy looped and curled around the clearing like a fireworks display, and only slowly faded into nothingness. She'd seen plenty such displays in the past few weeks, and it never failed to impress her. “I-I'll try to get it right next time!”

Youki turned a meaningful glance toward her, but it was the only acknowledgment he gave her. He shoved Hakurouken back into its sheath, then looked out over the garden. Already, his hand was patting his robe for the pouch that held his tobacco and rolling papers. “That's it for now,” he said.

“Thank you for the lesson,” Youmu said, and bowed deeply. Her phantom half bobbed down alongside her.

Youki busied himself rolling a cigarette, but freed a hand to wave her away. “Get some practice tonight, or you'll just be wasting my time tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir.”

Youki turned an annoyed glance toward her. “We're done here.”

“Y-yes, sir!” Youmu hurried across the garden to the spot where she'd left her belongings. There wasn't much, just a tied bundle of snacks—Yuyuko always insisted on giving her one, to 'put some meat on you.' She crouched down to pick it up, and was just turning to leave when Youki spoke up again.

“Hey, kid.” Youmu paused and turned around. Youki was in the final stages of rolling his cigarette, and didn't seem inclined to hurry on her account. He twisted the end closed with his lips, then let it hang at its customary position at the corner of his mouth. With that, he looked to Youmu again. “Can you even say anything but 'yes sir' and 'yes ma'am'?”

Youmu stared in slight confusion. “I can say other things...” And didn't have much choice anymore, in fact. She was saying more now than she ever did when she'd lived among humans. Yuyuko seemed dedicated to trying to pry every word out of her mouth that she could get.

“Huh.” Youki looked over her, conflicted, then walked back toward his shed. “C'mere. One more lesson today.” He took a seat on the steps again and tossed his sword to the side. “You've got to learn to be more assertive, kid.”

Oh.” Youmu came to a stop in front of him, and frowned as she considered this. “I'm sorry, but I don't know what that means...” 

“Standing up for yourself! Going for what you want! Look. I'm only saying this because you're a half-phantom. You lived with humans before this, right?”

Youmu nodded.

“They treat you good?”

Youmu hesitated. She didn't have an immediate answer to that. For the most part, before coming to Hakugyokurou, she'd never thought of anybody as treating her well or poorly. They had just... treated her as they cared to. The only time she had gotten attention was when she did something wrong, and some days, just being seen was enough.

Her face apparently said everything that Youki needed to know. “Thought so,” he said. “That's why you've got to grow a spine. Keep 'yes sir'ing everything and everybody will walk all over you. Got it?”

Youmu had to restrain herself from saying, “Yes, sir,” again. Instead, she said, “Right.”

“Somebody punches you, you have to punch them back.”

Youmu cocked her head, trying to decipher if this was some kind of trick or not. The villagers had been very clear about not fighting each other. “... really?”

“Did I stutter?”

“N-no sir, I just, um, I...!”

Youki snorted a cloud of smoke out his nose in annoyance, then pushed himself from the step and knelt down in front of her. “Punch me.”

“... w-what?”

“Right now. Punch me.” He flicked the ashes from his cigarette, then balanced it on a thigh. “In the face. Hard as you can.”

“I don't want to.”

“Kid, if you can't even punch somebody, you'll never make it as a swordsman.”

Youmu scowled, but when Youki didn't change his mind, she slowly worked up the nerve. Clenching her teeth, she pulled her hand back, balled it into a fist, and drove it forward. Her hand impacted his face with a sharp smack. Youki didn't budge. “Open your eyes,” he said. Youmu was afraid of what she'd see when she did, but she obeyed.

Youki didn't really look worse for the wear, apart from a slight red spot on his cheek. “Do it again, but keep them open this time,” he said.

Youmu drew her hand back again, and already, she was gritting her teeth in anticipation of the pain. She put more force into the punch this time, and somehow managed to keep her eyes open. This time, her aim was off. Her fist plowed right into Youki's nose, and he recoiled backward, cussing under his breath. He dabbed a fingertip under his nose, and satisfied that there was no blood, gave it a few sore rubs before looking back to her. He leveled one gnarled finger at her face. “Punching your master is about the worst thing you can do, you know.”

“S-Sorry...!” Youmu blurted.

“Don't be.” Youki lifted his cigarette to his mouth and took a drag from it. “Now you've punched somebody who didn't have it coming. The next time you want to punch somebody who deserves it, don't even hesitate. Got it?”

“I think so...”

“Good.” His expression softened for just a moment, then he dismissed her with a wave of a hand. “Lesson's over. Get out of here.”

* * *

Youmu's first spring in the Netherworld was a strange experience. In the human village, spring had been a time of new beginnings. The streets had filled with people, out enjoying the weather and getting long-delayed work done after the winter, birds had filled the air, and life had bloomed everywhere. By comparison, the Netherworld was... restrained. The snow vanished without ever seeming to melt, and the grass it left behind looked just as it had the prior autumn. The only sign that anything had changed in the Netherworld's eternal now was the flowers. Seemingly overnight, the cherry trees had bloomed, filling the mist around Hakugyokurou with pink bursts of flowers like fireworks.

The garden, filled with plants from the outside world, was the only part that behaved naturally to Youmu's eyes. The plants had put out buds one at a time, creeping toward spring at a more natural pace. Now, it was approaching full bloom. Phantom butterflies flickered between the blossoms, and the usually lifeless air of the Netherworld held a dozen delicate scents.

And, in the very back, Youki was busy gardening. He'd been wrapped up in it for days, taking every measure to ensure that nothing would detract from the grounds' unearthly beauty when spring peaked. Youmu came to a stop behind him, and watched. He looked like he was completely focused on the small cluster of plants in front of him. They were delicate-looking things, with long curved leaves and spindly stalks reaching up from the base. As she watched, he carefully picked through them with his fingers. Spotting a weed, he plucked it out of the ground and tossed it aside, then moved on. A few more weeds, none more than tiny, just-budding things, joined the pile. "If you've got something to say," he said, without looking back. "Then say it."

"Oh, um." Youmu dipped a shallow bow without thinking. "Lady Yuyuko said that I should see if you need any help with the gardens."

"I don't."

"She said that..." Youmu frowned as she tried to remember the exact words that Yuyuko had used. "Since you're too busy to train me in swordsmanship right now, you could give me moral guidance.”

Youki scowled back over his shoulder. “'Moral guidance'?”

“That's what she said.”

He rolled his eyes and turned back to his plants. He pulled a small knife from his belt, and resumed picking through them, this time inspecting the body of the plants themselves. After some searching, he found a stalk that looked lifeless, followed it down to the base with his fingers, and sliced it off. It soon landed on the pile of discarded weeds.

Youmu followed the stalk with her eyes, frowning. “That's mean.”

Youki didn't look away from the plant. After another minute or two of searching, he found another withered stalk and sliced it off. And another. Youmu waited in patient silence, studying his actions and restraining her urge to fidget. “If you're going to stare at me until I've taught you something, let's get this over with,” he said, finally. “What do you want to know?”

“Oh.” Youmu hadn't come prepared for this, and Yuyuko hadn't told her what she was supposed to be learning out here. She thought for a few seconds. “What are you doing?”

“Pruning,” Youki said, and resumed his work. Youmu watched. For all she knew, that was the whole lesson. “Getting rid of the dead parts. Too old. Won't make flowers anymore. The plant just wastes energy keeping them alive.”

“Oh...” Youmu looked to the growing pile. “It still seems mean.”

“That's how life is.” Youki went silent, returning to his careful examination of the plants. After some time, he rocked back on his heels, looking over his handiwork.

"They're pretty," Youmu said, lacking anything else to contribute to the conversation.

Youki scoffed. "Not right now, they aren't. Nothing but scraggly weeds." Even so, he looked pleased at the compliment.

Youmu stepped forward and tentatively crouched down in front of them, half-afraid that Youki was going to chase her off. She poked at a leaf. "What are they?"

"Wind orchid."

"Are they flowers?"

Youki shot her an annoyed glance, but Youmu held her ground. "... yeah. Pink. Special kind of blooms, too. Only grown by the Konpaku clan."

Youmu frowned. She'd only heard the word 'clan' a few times, from Yuyuko. "Is a clan like a family?"

Youki grunted in response. "Close enough. Used to be..." He reached forward and cupped a small protrusion at the end of one of the stalks. "Used to be one of the most powerful around. Half-phantoms aren't much use in politics, but we could take anybody on the battlefield."

"What happened?"

"Never really fit in anywhere to begin with. Too dead for the human world, too alive for the Netherworld. Then guns came along, and suddenly, not much room for the wandering swordsman deal, is there?" He looked to her. "You're the first half-phantom I've seen in most of a century."

It took Youmu a moment to realize that he'd shifted the topic of the conversation toward her. She leaned back, and her phantom half drifted down behind her. “There aren't many people like us?”

“Not many left,” Youki said, glancing back to the plants. He frowned thoughtfully, cleaning his knife on the front of his robe. “Most of 'em...” He trailed off, and his expression hardened. “Cripes, kid, you ask too many questions.”

“I-I'm sorry.”

“Yeah, well, lesson's over.” Youki raised his knife and gestured with it. “Go on, scram. You're getting on my nerves.”

Youmu froze, uncertain if she'd some unknown offense. “As you wish,” she murmured. After a quick bow, she turned and hurried out of the garden.

* * *

With a clipped kiai, Youki leapt forward. His bokken flared silver in his hands. Rather than try blocking such a powerful blow, Youmu rolled to the side. The wooden sword whiffed through the air where she'd been, and when it drove into the earth, waves of energy crackled across the ground. Before he could recover, Youmu bolstered her phantom half, making it glare like a miniature sun, and slammed it into him. He rolled with the attack, but she didn't let up. She charged right after it, sword held down and to the side, and put the entire force of her body into a single upward swipe. In a blur, Youki sidestepped it. A single blow with his hilt sent her stumbling forward. Another sent pain and numbness into her back. He whirled around, and a kick to her rear sent her sprawling onto the grass.

“Sloppy!”

Youmu pushed herself off the ground with a groan. The aches running through her back were already subsiding. One of the few benefits of being half-dead. She knew from experience that Youki didn't want to hear anything but acknowledgment of her mistakes at this point. “I thought you'd be too unbalanced to counterattack,” she said breathlessly, and rolled over to sit on the grass. “I should have used a faster attack without leaving myself open.”

“Nnh.” Youki snorted at her appraisal. Since he never hesitated to show disapproval, she took it to mean that he agreed. He turned away from her and walked over to the stairs of his shack, where he lowered himself to sitting. Though he tried to hide it, he was careful as he lowered himself, and only his use of his bokken as a cane kept him from collapsing onto the steps.

Youmu had been at Hakugyokurou for a few years now, and it was hard to deny it: Youki was getting slower. He could still pull off attacks that left her breathless, but they seemed to... drain him. She occasionally spotted him wincing after particularly impressive techniques. Their sessions were growing shorter. He denied it, but he favored one knee, and winced whenever he had to put too much weight on it.

The pattern of their training sessions was well-worn by now, and she knew that she'd been dismissed. She gathered the bokken up, then carried them into the mansion to return them to their storage rack. When she came back outside, Youki was looking up at the sky. He ignored her presence as she busied herself with cleaning up the rest of the detritus of their sparring session. 

“Thank you for the lesson,” Youmu said, and bowed. Youki didn't seem to notice.

She turned to go back in to the mansion. She was nearly to the door when his voice stopped her. “Hey, kid.”

Youmu stopped and turned around. “Yes?”

“Yuyuko...” Youki's eyes were still glued to the heavens. Youmu followed them, but could see nothing. The Netherworld sky was the same slate gray covering of clouds that she'd grown accustomed to. “Is she still talking about that tree?”

“... she is, yes. She was arguing about it with Lady Yukari last week.”

“If she goes through with it, a lot of shit's gonna go down.” When Youmu had no response to that, he met her gaze. “A lot of fighting. Are you okay with that?”

“I-if anybody tries to hurt Lady Yuyuko,” Youmu said. She reflexively reached for the spot where her sword hanged when she patrolled the gardens, but wasn't wearing it. “I will cut them to ribbons.” She relaxed out of her combat stance. “Nobody could get past both of us.”

“Heh.” Youki kept his eyes on her face, like he was searching for something, then waved her away. “Go get your sword.”

“My training sword?”

“Your real one. Roukanken.”

“Very well. … will you need a sword too?”

“Doesn't matter!” Youki said, in the groaning tone of voice that Youmu had learned to mean that she was asking too many questions. “Just bring it. I've got a present for ya.”

“... r-right!” Youmu bowed sharply and hurried toward the mansion, already wondering what he had in mind. He'd never given her a present. Not even so much as one yen on New Year's, when Yuyuko always showered her with gifts. She tried to keep her mind clear and focused on the lesson, but already, she could feel her excitement building.

It wasn't a long trip to her room, where Roukanken stood in a stand by her door. The sword was huge, longer than she was tall. Yuyuko had said that she would grow into it. The sword was too long for her to use comfortably, and even after she hanged it near-horizontal across her back, it almost dragged the ground. She had to carefully duck through the doorways on her way back out, but soon she was in the garden again.

She was barely out the door when Youki chucked something at her. She stumbled backward, and fumbled with it before it came to a stop in her hands. It was Hakurouken, Youki's wakizashi. The lacquered surface of the sheath felt cold under her fingers. “Master...?”

“Go on, put it on.” Youki was still sitting on the stairs of the shack, but he'd obviously had to go inside to get the sword. There was a battered leather bag on the steps next to him, with an equally weathered sword propped against it.

Youmu shot him a quizzical glance, but slid Hakurouken's strap over her shoulder and lowered it into place, hanging opposite Roukanken. She shifted her weight a few times to get comfortable with it.

Youki looked over her appraisingly. “... you look ridiculous,” he said with a snort.

“What am I doing with your sword?”

“Nothing. It's yours now.”

“I don't understand...?” Youmu reached back and grabbed the hilt, reassuring herself that the sword was real. “Why?”

Youki's hand twitched toward his robe, prepared to roll a cigarette, but he stopped himself. His eyes turned up to the sky again. “Hakurouken's been in the Konpaku clan for twenty generations. Passed down from master to his best student and all that.”

“I can't take your sword.”

“Only student I've got, aren't you?”

Youmu hardened her expression. “I'm not in your clan, either. I'm not taking your sword.”

She reached back to remove it, and was stopped by a curt gesture from him. “Get over here.”

Youmu approached the steps, and Youki pushed himself to standing and disappeared into his shack. A few seconds of rummaging noises followed. When he emerged again, he was carrying a potted plant tucked under one arm, a spool of twine and a pair of pruning shears in the other. He eased himself down to the steps, joints creaking, and got to work. First, the plant. The flowers were spindly pink things, with long curved petals. He hunted through them with his fingertips until he found one that met his approval, then snipped it off.

After sitting the flower aside, Youki moved on to the roll of twine. He cut off a short length of it and beckoned Youmu closer. She moved right up to the base of the steps. Youki leaned forward, and...

Youmu's experiences with Yuyuko had left her expecting a hug, from that motion. Instead, he reached past her and pulled Roukanken's sheath closer. The motion left him leaning against her, with his shoulder just below her chin. It was close enough that she could smell him. The dark tarry stink of his cigarettes, sap, dirt, and sweat. It was a smell that she'd gotten used to, somehow.

“There,” Youki said, and pulled back.

Youmu looked down. Near the bottom of Roukanken's sheath, Youki had tied the flower. It was lashed on with the length of twine, with its single blossom sticking up. Only now did her memory dredge up the name of the plant: _wind orchid_. Youki stepped back to lean against the shack. “As the, uh, acting head of the clan...” He trailed off and rubbed at his head. ”Whatever. You're a member now.”

It took a moment for Youmu's mind to catch up with the conversation. She pulled the sword forward again to look at the flower in confusion, then back to Youki. “A member of... your clan?”

“What I said, isn't it? You don't have a family name, right?”

“You're sure this is okay...?”

“I just told ya, didn't I?!”

Youmu's head was swimming, and her hand fretted with the hilt of Hakurouken. “Th-thank you, master!” she blurted, and folded her body in a jackknife bow. The swords threatened to slide off of her back.

“Doesn't mean much. As far as I know, it's just me, these days. Well, me and you now, I guess.”

Youmu straightened up and reached down to cup the flower. It felt delicate, like it might disintegrate with the slightest pressure. “But... why?”

“Eh. Even a no-name clan like this doesn't deserve to have me as its last member.”

Youmu resisted the urge to bow again. Her head felt like a dozen thoughts were tangled inside, and she had no hope of sorting them out. Her attention only turned back to the present when Youki crouched down and pulled his bag from the steps, then slung it over a shoulder. “Anyway. I'm going out,” he announced. “Got some business to take care of.”

“Oh.” Coming at the tail end of the strange conversation, Youmu wasn't sure how to respond to that statement. “Should I tell Lady Yuyuko that you'll be missing dinner?”

“Tell her... tell her you'll be taking over my duties for a while.” Youki grunted as he pulled the bag into a comfortable position, then lifted the battered sword from the steps and hanged it at his side. “And watch my orchids while I'm gone.” He jerked a thumb toward the shack. “Keep 'em indoors, but put them somewhere they can get some sun in the winter. Give them a little water on warm days.”

Youmu's head was swimming now. All she could think to do was bow. “I understand.”

“They're the last of their kind, so I'll be pissed if you let 'em die.”

“I-I'll do my best!” Youmu straightened up from her bow, and hesitated. “Will you... be gone a long time, then?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“Last thing I need is a kid slowin' me down.”

“Where are you going...?”

“Away!” Youki hefted his bag again, and turned to look toward the horizon. “... hey, kid.”

“Yes?”

“Don't stop practicing while I'm gone. If I get back and you're rusty, I'll be pissed.”

“I'll practice every day!” Youmu said, barely resisting the urge to bow again.

“Hrm. You'd better.” Youki glanced back over his shoulder at her, and for a moment, Youmu thought that he was going to add something else. He looked away, though, and started walking. She didn't look away until the Netherworld's mists of time and memory had swallowed him.


	2. Sanae

Sanae loved visiting the old shrine. There was a giant lake behind it, where she could run on the shore and catch frogs and watch the fish. Every time they visited, Kanako had a present waiting for her. The building itself was old and creaky. Just visiting it felt like traveling to another world, and it somehow made her feel better about herself.

Sanae's mother... did not love the shrine. She always grew quiet a few hours before they left home. Even at her age, Sanae could see that she dreaded the visits. “It's a decaying old tourist trap,” she had told Sanae once, on the train ride there. “Nobody thinks like Kanako anymore. She needs to understand that the world has moved on.”

Today's trip was different. Her parents had been telling her for weeks what was going to happen. They'd packed up most of her things into cardboard boxes the night before. They were piled high next to her in the back seat now, jiggling and bouncing every time the car went over a pothole. A short ways from the shrine, they turned off onto a narrow side road. It meandered down the hillside, and ended at a small parking lot. Beyond, a walkway led down to the shrine's side entrance, bounded by torii overhead.

Sanae's parents got out of the car and piled boxes into their arms. She followed after them down the path. “Did you remember to pack your toothbrush?” her mother asked.

“Yeah.” Sanae tilted her head back to look at the torii as they pass beneath them.

“Did you get your clothes from the dirty laundry?”

“Yep...” Sanae looked forward again, then paused and patted at her pocket. Her eyes went wide. “Oh! Um, crap!”

“What is it?”

“I forgot my Game Boy!”

“Why didn't you pack it when you did the rest of your toys?!”

“I, uh.” She'd been playing it in bed after lights-out, like she always did, and left it on her nightstand. But her parents didn't need to know that. “Guess I didn't see it...”

Her mother sighed, and her father shifted the boxes in his arms. “It's too late to go get it,” he said, without looking back. “And we're not going to have time to bring it here.”

“... we'll mail it to you,” her mother said. “Remind me to tell her to watch for the package.”

“'kay.” Sanae didn't like the thought of going that long without it, but it didn't seem like a good idea to make a big deal about it. Instead, she took the opportunity to look around as they passed through the last set of torii and into the courtyard. The place was almost empty, with only a few tourists who didn't pay much mind to them. The shrine hadn't changed much since her last visit. She knew how to climb half of the trees on the grounds, and a quick glance assured her that Kanako hadn't yet boarded up the entrance to the storage building's crawlspace. She wondered if she was still small enough to fit into it.

Her mother led the group down the familiar path back past the main hall, back to the living quarters. They all stopped to pile up their boxes, her father knocked on the door...

And Sanae noticed something moving from the corner of her eye. She turned, and found a blonde girl watching her with interest from a few meters away. The girl jolted in surprise, too. They stared at each other for a moment, and the girl clucked her tongue. “You can see me, can't you?” She sounded impressed.

“Huh? Um, yeah, why wouldn't I...?”

“Hey, not bad! You're already doing better than half your ancestors!” The girl hopped down and moved closer. “Going to be moving in with us, are you?”

“Uh-huh.”

The girl crossed her arms and nodded thoughtfully at this. “What's your name?”

“Um, Sanae, but...”

"Sanae, are you talking to yourself?" It was her father's voice. Sanae turned around, and found that all three adults were looking at her. Kanako peered at her with interest from the doorway, Dad just looked confused, and mom looked concerned.

"Huh? No, I..." Sanae looked back to the girl. There was nothing there, and a quick glance around the clearing assured her that there was nobody else around.

"I'm sure it's nothing," Kanako said, before Sanae could gather her wits enough to put together an explanation. Sanae could almost swear that she shot a warning glance at the spot where the girl had been. "Do you need some help with the rest?"

"Sanae and I can start unpacking. Would you mind helping Saburo bring in the rest of the boxes?"

"Of course."

Sanae gave one last glance around the area before she reluctantly hefted a few boxes and followed her mother inside. They made their way to a room at the back, small and empty, but lived-in. The roof slanted down to the rear wall of the shrine, and the only furnishings were a dresser, a futon rolled in the corner, and a desk. The desk and dresser looked like they'd been there for ages.

Sanae's mother sat her box down and looked around, brushing her hands clean. Sanae dropped her own, but before she could straighten up again, she caught a single glimpse out of the corner of her eye: the girl, sitting on the edge of the desk.

She turned to look at her. The desk was empty. Nothing on it.

"Sanae, are you okay?

"O-oh, um!" Sanae gave the room one last lingering look as she debated whether to answer that truthfully. “There was this girl... I think she lives here.”

“A girl,” her mother repeated. She raised an eyebrow and took a glance around for herself. Seeming satisfied that there was nothing, she crouched down and felt Sanae's forehead. Apparently satisfied, she nodded to herself. “Well, nobody else lives here, so it must be your imagination.”

“Oh, um.” Sanae glanced toward the spot where the girl had been sitting. Still nothing. “Right...”

Seeing that Sanae wasn't convinced, her mother pulled her forward into a hug. “I know that this shrine is old and a little creepy, but it's just a normal building. I worked here as a shrine maiden for two summers, and _I_ got through it just fine. Kanako is an old friend of the family. She'll take good care of you, I promise.”

Sanae squeezed back into the hug, and slowly relaxed as she accepted the reassurances. "R-right, um, I'm fine! Just kind of nervous, I guess."

Her mother nodded, but didn't seem satisfied just yet. She pulled back from the hug and gave a lopsided reassuring smile. "This should only be for a year or so," she said, for what felt like the thousandth time.

"Yeah, I know."

"We'll be back as soon as your father can get a transfer back to Japan."

"Uh-huh."

"We'll call you every week, and you can call us any time you want, okay?"

"Yeah..."

“Good.” Her mother pulled her into a half-hug, then pushed herself back to standing with a grunt of exertion. “Then let's finish unpacking.”

Sanae spotted the girl five more times that night. She did her very best to ignore her until her parents had said their tearful goodbyes and driven home.

* * *

"Hey, mom, guess what?"

"Huh? What?"

Sanae shifted the phone around to her other ear. “I found out today, Suwako is a real goddess!”

She hadn't intended to reveal her big news first thing in the call, and now that it had spilled out, she wished that she'd built up to it a bit more. The first few times she'd mentioned seeing Suwako to her mother, her mom had written it off as the product of an overactive imagination. More recently, though, her mother had seemed increasingly worried whenever she came up. This time, Sanae could picture the way that her mother tensed up before she said, “A goddess.”

“Yeah! Um, well, I mean...” She fumbled with the phone, and slid down to sit against the wall as she considered her words. “I got to talk to her more yesterday, and she's a real goddess. She's, like, really old, and she used to have a whole kingdom and stuff!”

“Sanae.” Her mother's voice was thin and tense. “Remember, honey, we talked about this. Suwako isn't _real_. She's imaginary, like a fairy tale.”

“No, she's real, I swear! You just can't see her because of the goddess thing. She says, um.” Suwako had prepared her for this. Sanae closed her eyes, and tried to remember everything that the goddess had drilled into her head. “She says that when you were at the shrine to drop me off, you asked for her to protect me, and, uh, that it was a 'damn fool' thing to ask for, because she was going to do that anyway.”

There was a pause at the other end of the phone this time. “... Sanae, that isn't funny. And please watch your tongue.”

“That's what she said, though!” Sanae squeaked in her own defense. “And that one time when you worked at the shrine, you had a boy over, and he was being a jerk to you, so she made him trip and hurt his leg!”

The pause was longer this time. “... I don't know how you heard about that, but...”

“A-and!” Sanae wasn't about to give up so easily. She leaned forward, with the receiver held closer to her mouth. “She said that, when you were a kid, she used to turn into a frog and watch you sometimes, and one time you saw her sitting on your futon, and you got so scared that you lost a tooth when you ran into the door!”

“And you're telling me,” her mother finally said, very carefully, like she was disarming a bomb. “That there's an invisible girl in the shrine who told you all of this, and she's a goddess.”

“Uh-huh! Well, she's not invisible to _me_ , but she says I'm special.”

“And you know that it isn't good to lie, right?”

“I'm not lying mom, I swear!”

An even longer silence this time. “... can you please put Kanako on the phone? I'd like to hear her take on all of this.”

* * *

"... hello? Yes, Mrs. Kochiya?" The teacher said. He paced anxiously around the teacher's lounge as he spoke. Combined with his lanky build, it made him look like some kind of bird, to Sanae's mind. "Yes. I'm sorry to bother you at this hour, I know it must be late over there. This is Sato, Sanae's home room teacher. Yes. Yes. Ah, you see..."

Sanae scowled and shrunk down in her seat, bracing herself for what came next. She could almost imagine her mother doing the same, sitting in their apartment thousands of kilometers away.

"... it's about Sanae's behavior. She... I don't know how to put this. She brought frogs into school. Yes. Yes, frogs. Yes. two dozen. We're not sure how, but she put them in a boy's locker. I will admit that there have been severe issues with how other students treat her, but I'm sure that you can imagine how disruptive this was. Your daughter needs to understand that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated at...! Yes. Of course.” He turned and looked to Sanae, offering over the phone. “She wants to speak to you.”

Sanae pouted, already anticipating what was coming, but accepted the phone. “... hey, mom."

“Do you care to explain yourself?”

“The frogs didn't hurt anything!” It was the best defense that Sanae had managed to come up with in the time that she'd spent being chastised on the chair. “And I, um... didn't think it'd work...”

“You didn't think _what_ would work?”

“... hold on.” Sanae covered the receiver with a hand and looked to Mr. Sato. “This is kind of personal, can I get a few minutes of privacy?”

“If it has to do with today's events, you can say it in front of me.”

“Come on, I can't escape or anything! It's just... you know. _Girl things._ ” Frogs were girl things, she supposed. Suwako liked them enough.

The teacher held his ground for a few seconds, but caved in with a sigh. “Three minutes,” he said. “If you touch anything while I'm out of the room, I'm doubling your detention.”

“I won't, I swear!” Sanae waited until he had walked out of the room and shut the door behind himself, then lifted the phone to her mouth again. “Okay, sorry. I had to get him out of the room. So, anyway! It wasn't _just_ some frogs. It was a _plague_ of frogs! I mean, it was a pretty tiny plague, but—“

“A plague of frogs,” her mother said flatly.

“Yeah!” Sanae said, and reminded herself to _try_ not to sound so excited. “I-I mean. I just sort of... felt like I could, and then I gave it a shot. I didn't really think it would work, though!”

“Sanae, I don't understand, I...” Her mother gave a slight sigh of exertion, followed by the sound of a switch clicking. Turning on the lights, probably. It was pretty late at night over there. “Where did the frogs come from?”

“That's what I mean! I think it was...” Sanae glanced toward the door. It was still shut, but she pulled the phone even closer to her mouth and lowered her voice. “I think it was a miracle. Like, a real one.”

Her mother went silent. Sanae could picture her now. It had been a few years, but the way that her mom rubbed the bridge of her nose when she was brooding would be burnt into her mind forever. “Did you ever stop to think that maybe, filling a locker with frogs wasn't a good idea?”

“That's not even really the issue here! I mean, it was a _miracle_! This was just a start, but with some practice, I might be able to... heal sick people, or fight crime, or... oh man, I'm like a superhero or something!”

“Sanae, slow down,” her mother said. She sounded like she wasn't sure whether to sound amused or upset. “Did... Suwako, put you up to this?”

“Huh? Oh, um, no. She can't really say much right now, actually. She's kind of... sick.” Sanae shifted uncomfortably at the euphemism. This didn't seem like the time or place to explain what happened to a goddess who didn't get enough worship. “It just kinda came to me.”

“I see.” Her mother sighed. “A miracle, hmm?”

“Yep.”

Sanae's mother went silent, and even without seeing her, Sanae could tell that she was struggling to fit this into her worldview. She really did seem to be trying to understand this stuff. She'd even tried her best to see Suwako on their visit over the summer, making small talk with the spot in the air where Sanae pointed her out. “I'm... very proud of you,” her mother said. “But I don't think that you should do this kind of thing anymore. You could get in trouble.”

“I—y-yeah, but...!” Sanae stammered. She slumped in her chair. “It's a miracle, mom...! People ought to know that kind of stuff is real!”

“Maybe so,” her mother said, carefully. “But you don't need to be the one to show them. Not right now.”

Sanae bit down on her lower lip to stifle her protests, and let out a low sigh. “Okay.”

“I know that this kind of thing is exciting, but you need to be focusing on school right now. All the frogs in the world won't help you if you can't get a job.”

"Right..." Sanae wanted to melt out of the chair. Never had she been dragged from ecstasy to misery so quickly.

“Good.” With that established, her mother's voice lost some of its seriousness. “I really do want to hear more about it sometime, though, okay? For now, what are you going to tell the teacher?”

"I dunno," Sanae mumbled. "I'll say I brought them in a sack or something."

* * *

Mornings were the best time to call her parents, Sanae had found. It usually worked out to be the evening over there, and while her father was more and more busy these days, she could usually catch her mom at home. And today was a gorgeous morning. There were just enough clouds to break up the sunrise a little, giving the sky a warm pink glow. The lake reflected it, and if she looked straight ahead, it almost felt like she was floating through the heavens.

It seemed like a good sign, and she focused on the lake's surface to try calming herself down. It didn't help much. Her hands were shaking, and she tightened her grip on her phone to make sure she didn't drop it. All the while, fragments of potential conversations drifted through her head. ' _Hey, mom, I know this will sound crazy, but..._ ' ' _Okay, so, if somebody offered you the opportunity to..._ ' ' _Guess what I'm doing...!_ '

In the end, she didn't feel like she'd figured anything out by the time that she made the call. It just kind of happened. She hit the dial button on her phone and sank down to the ground. Sitting cross-legged, each unanswered ring still felt like it might knock her over.

A ring was cut short. "I was wondering when you'd call," Mom's voice said. Sanae almost wilted in relief. Her mother continued, oblivious. "It's been almost two weeks!"

"Ehe. Hi, mom. Yeah, sorry. I've been really busy lately..."

"I know, sweetie. Entrance exams will be over soon enough. It only feels like forever when you're taking them." On the other end of the phone, something was making distant sizzling noises.

"A-ah, yeah, I guess it won't be much longer, huh?!" Sanae said, with a nervous laugh. She hadn't taken a single entrance exam yet. Her teachers were giving her hell over it—not applying to a single college, with _her_ grades?—but she'd somehow convinced them to not complain to her parents yet. "So, um! Are you making dinner?"

"Hmm? Yeah. Sorry, is it too loud?" The sizzling grew quieter.

"Oh, no, it was fine, I could just hear it. What's for dinner?"

"Omelet rice. Your father will be home late tonight, and I'm too tired for anything fancy, so..."

"Ah, yeah." Sanae had only asked the question out of idle curiosity, something to keep the conversation going and delay the inevitable, but nostalgia flowed over her like a river. She hadn't tasted her mother's omelet rice in seven years. It seemed like a really silly thing to miss, but right now, she would've killed for it. "... hey, mom?"

"Yes?"

"I kind of... I just. Um." She never had decided how to segue into this conversation. Nothing to do now but jump in and see where she ended up. "Can we talk about something?"

"Well, it would be awkward if we just sat here without talking, wouldn't it? What's wrong?"

"Lady Kanako's thinking of... moving."

"Moving? Did she finally get tired of that drafty shrine?"

"Not really. Well, actually, kind of." Sanae went quiet, and started idly plucking blades of grass out of the ground. It felt impossible to move further in this conversation. She'd performed plenty of miracles at this point, but some things were beyond even the domain of miracles.

"Sanae?"

"Sorry, just thinking. The place she's thinking of moving to is, um, really far away."

"Where?"

"It's called Gensokyo. I guess it's kind of where all the gods went after everything became modern and stuff? She found some way to move the shrine. They still, um. They still believe in stuff over there. It's supposed to be a lot nicer for gods." In a quieter voice, she added, "She thinks it'll be good for Lady Suwako."

There was a pause as her mother absorbed all of that. "Well. I'm glad that they've found somewhere they belong."

"Yeah, it's nice..."

"When will they be moving? If it's within the next few months, we'll have to find somewhere for you to stay until you're through high school. If you feel okay living on your own, we could probably afford to pay for an apartment for a few months, but..."

"It will be a few months, but I kind of." Sanae's vision blurred as her eyes teared up. She squeezed them shut. "I kind of... no, um, I-I definitely! I want to go with them!"

Another long pause. "Something tells me you wouldn't be coming back."

"I-I don't know." Sanae sniffled. "Lady Kanako thinks maybe there might be a way to come back out occasionally, but it's, um. It's pretty much... permanent, yeah. I-it's just!" Sanae's voice cracked, but her scattered thoughts were beginning to come together. "I don't wanna hide my miracles! I can control the wind and fly, and I can't even tell anybody or they'll think I'm crazy! That's bullcrap, mom!" Sanae trailed off into something halfway between a sob and a laugh, which itself ended in a violent hiccup. "I know that gods and stuff actually exist. I can't just ignore all that and go be a, a-an _accountant_ or something! I can't!"

Sanae's mother took a long, steadying breath. "You sound like you've already made up your mind, haven't you?"

"Yeah, u-um." Sanae sniffled again. "We've been talking about it for a while."

"And you're sure it's what's best for you, not just Kanako?"

"Y-yeah."

This time, the silence was so long that Sanae started worrying if she'd hung up. It wasn't until she heard a soft moan from the other side that she realized: her mother was still there. She was just busy crying, herself.

“Tell me,” her mother said in a quaking voice, after some time, “about this place you're considering.”

* * *

In the end, Sanae convinced her parents to respect her wishes. It took two weeks and more than one hours-long phone call, but she convinced them. In the weeks leading up to the move, they came for one final five-day visit.

But, they couldn't be there on the day of the move. Anything on the shrine's grounds that was staying behind would be in for a rough time.

Sanae couldn't help out much with Kanako's plans—and most of them were a fair bit over her head, talk about the mythology of the shrine and how it interacted with human belief—but she did what she could. She dragged out old signs from the storage building to warn off the handful of early morning tourists. She double-checked the supplies they'd stockpiled to make sure nothing was missing.

And, once she was certain that she'd done everything that she could, she sat down on the shrine's front steps and pulled out her phone. This time, it barely even completed the first ring before her mother picked up. “Sanae?”

“Hi, mom!” It wasn't until she spoke that Sanae realized that her entire body was tingling with excitement and anxiety. She wasn't sure whether she felt more like running laps around the courtyard or throwing up. “Lady Kanako just started her thing a while ago. I don't know how much time I have, though... She didn't really tell me how long this would take.”

“I'm just glad you called.” Mom's voice sounded tired and thin, even though she was trying to sound cheerful. It sent a pang of guilt through Sanae. “Did you remember to stock up on your pills?”

“Uh-huh. I have a three month supply. That should cover it until we can find something over there.”

“And winter clothes?”

“Mom, I _have_ winter clothes already, all that stuff's coming with us.”

“Aren't you still using that same windbreaker that—I guess it's too late now, isn't it? Well, look for something thicker once you're there. You don't know what the weather will be like.”

“I will, mom, okay?” Sanae said. She was too jittery to even attempt her put-upon teenager voice at the moment. Besides, the little pieces of prosaic worry helped calm her down a little. They were comforting bits of familiarity after the increasingly strange events of the past few weeks.

“You sound like you have this all figured out.” Mom sounded amused.

“Ehe. Not all the way! Lady Kanako's put a lot of thought into it, though. I'm still kind of nervous. I tried to read a bunch of books on youkai and stuff, but I don't really feel ready. Um, apparently the area we're going to end up has a bunch of tengu and kappa. Isn't that weird to think about? Having a bunch of weird monsters for neighbors? I guess it's pretty cool, though...”

“I'm not sure if 'cool' is the word that I'd use.”

“R-right. Anyway, she's gonna teach me to defend myself too, so I'll be alright, I promise. I won't lose!”

“I'm sure you'll be fine,” mom said, not sounding entirely convinced of it. “Your father wants to talk to you, hold on.” (Somewhere in the background, she could hear him shout, “Hi, Sanae!”) “… but, Sanae?”

“Yeah?”

“I know that having us so far away has made things hard sometimes... but I want you to know that we—“ There was a brief burst of static. “—proud of you.“ A longer burst of static.

“Huh? You're breaking up,” Sanae said... and then cold realization clamped down in her mind. She stood up and looked back to the shrine, but there still wasn't any sign that it was anything but a normal day. “Can you guys hear me?”

“—nae? Are you—“

Sanae looked to the sky, but it was still a sunny, cloudless day. There was nothing to disrupt the signal, unless... “H-hey, um, I think it's starting, so we've gotta make this quick, okay?! Are you still there?”

“—still here.” It was her father's voice this time. With a harsh metallic distortion, but still recognizable. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, it's the ritual, I think...!” Sanae had been preparing for this moment for weeks, but still felt frantic. Somehow, even with all the forewarning, the reality of her situation hadn't quite hit her until now. She glanced down the walkway toward the rest of the city, and some part of her wondered if she was fast enough to get off the shrine's grounds in time. “Th-there's probably not much time, s-so, um...!” Sanae could feel tears running down her cheeks now, but the adrenaline vaulted her past her other emotions. “I-I promise I'll try to write to you or something, no matter what it takes!”

Sanae paused to wait for a response, but only unsteady static came from the phone. A sort of shudder ran through the air around her, and for a moment, the entire world seemed to split into two copies around her. The aftermath left her wobbling, but she wiped her eyes with the back of her free hand and pulled her phone closer. “I love you guys, okay?! Mom, dad, I love you! Can you hear me?!”

“Sana—“ The voice was so garbled that she couldn't even tell which parent it was. “—be good! We love y—“

That experience of the world splitting around her returned, and for a second, Sanae felt like she was being stretched. Then, the tension released, like a rubber band snapping. A new sky unfurled overhead. Sanae's phone, now silent, fell to the ground, and she began sobbing.


	3. Reimu

The house had only been abandoned for a matter of months, but the elements had not been kind to it. Left empty during the rainy season, a storm had ruined the roof and twisted some of the exterior panels, and the rest of the elements had swarmed into the opening. Now, it stank of mildew, with long mud smears on the floor where animals had entered. The only light was from sunlight seeping in through the cracks. There wasn't much for it to illuminate anyway. The former owner had lived on the farthest outskirts of the village, and he had not been a rich man. When he had passed away, distant relatives had claimed what valuables and furniture there were, and the place had been left empty.

The girl had taken refuge in the corner of the former main room, at the very back of the house. A loose door propped against the wall served as a makeshift hiding spot, and an extra roof against the water leaking in from a late spring rain. She wasn't sure how long she'd been curled up beneath it. The night had come and gone, and she'd napped for a short while. When she'd woken up, it had only seemed natural enough to continue laying here. Her stomach growled, but it somehow didn't register.

The rough sound of a disused door opening broke the silence. Footsteps followed, heavy and dull on the ruined floor. The girl could hear them meander around the house, broken by the occasional rustling of objects being pulled aside. When they turned and started approaching her hiding spot, she shrunk back, clutching her knees to her chest. A red skirt swished into view in front of her, and the wearer crouched down. With one hand resting on the door, she leaned in. “Hah, I found you. Reimu, right?”

The woman's hair was just short of shoulder length, and apart from the bun on the back of her head, a bit of a tangled mess. Her outfit was a strange red-and-white deal, with big baggy sleeves that hanged down in front of her, and her face had a strangely ageless quality, making it hard to tell whether she was barely more than a teenager or old enough to be Reimu's mother. Whoever she was, she was nobody that Reimu had ever met. After the past few weeks of her life, that was more than enough to leave Reimu suspicious of her. She pushed herself up to sitting, without taking her eyes off the woman for a moment. “Yeah, I am,” she said.

“Don't have anywhere to live, do ya?”

“I have some relatives,” Reimu said defensively. It was true, technically. None who had been willing to shelter her for more than a few weeks. Temporary measures, always ending with the coldest things said in the kindest voices. ' _... can't afford to keep you here any longer... the fisherman near the gate is your mother's cousin, and he's agreed to look after you until the winter, at least..._ ' After months of it, being bounced from place to place, shuffled between strangers who were more and more open about the fact that they viewed her as an unwanted burden, she had run away one evening, and been hiding for almost a week since.

The house's furniture had been claimed in a matter of days. Nobody, though had been able to find room for the child who had lived here. So, here she was.

The woman flopped down on the floor, sitting cross-legged across from Reimu. Into her lap, she dropped a paper bag. Reimu's nose was instantly struck by the smell coming from it, and her tummy grumbled. _Food._ The woman seemed to spot her reaction, and smirked. “Hungry, huh?” She reached inside, and pulled out a meat bun, wrapped in wax paper. “Here.”

Just seeing food was enough to make Reimu's stomach ache, but she managed to restrain herself. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you giving me food?”

“Hmm.” The woman nodded at this, seeming to approve of Reimu's suspicion. “I wanna talk to you.”

Reimu didn't like the sound of that, but for the moment, her stomach won out. She'd been finding some food, the unguarded edges of farmers' fields and her father's own untended garden, but nowhere near enough to satisfy herself. She snatched up the bun, and only after she'd taken a massive bite out of it did she allow herself to relax

The lady sprawled inelegantly backward on the floor, fished another bun out of the sack, and took a big bite of her own. “Not on good terms with the rest of the family, huh?”

The questions were only making Reimu more suspicious, but in her current state, she couldn't be too cross at anybody who had given her food. “Why do you care?”

“Well... first off, do you know who I am?”

“Nope.”

“Konomi Hakurei. That's 'Konomi,' written with the first character of 'fruit,'” the woman said, seeming inexplicably proud of this knowledge. “... I know we never met or nothing, but I'm your dad's... dad's... uh, we share a great-grandpa, I think. Cousins or something.”

“I'm not going back.”

“Didn't say you were. Got an idea, though, if you'll hear me out.” When it became obvious that she wasn't going to immediately run away, the woman soldiered on. “Look, anyway, I'm the head miko of the shrine. You know what _that_ is?”

Reimu scowled at her over the edge of the bun, but said, “The place you go for New Year's.”

“Yeah, you got it. That's where I live.” Konomi stuffed the last of her own meat bun in her mouth, and didn't bother to wait until she was finished chewing to resume talking. "Part of my job's making sure nobody gets attacked by youkai. The way I see it, a kid like you livin' alone out here is about three days away from getting ate up. Aren't you afraid?"

Reimu looked sullenly down at her bun, but managed a shrug. She was vaguely aware of the threat of youkai. There had been a few long nights when her father had stood watch by the door after hearing nearby cries of hunting packs. The possibility of getting eaten felt distant and muted compared to everything that had happened over the last few months, though.

Konomi watched her face through this, and Reimu suspected that she was being evaluated. “Anyway, that's not all I do. The shrine's pretty important. Helps keep Gensokyo running, that kinda thing.”

“Huh...” Reimu finished off her meat bun, and looked to the bag. While before, her stomach had been a dull ache, resigned to going without food, now it was gnawing at her, demanding more. Konomi offered another bun over. Reimu almost stuffed the whole thing into her mouth.

“The thing is,” the shrine maiden continued, “there's not really people lining up to work at the shrine. Ever since my mom died, it's just me, and _I'm_ not going to have kids any time soon. Some of my, uh, friends won't stop bugging me about it."

"Um. What's that have to do with me?"

"Well, do you wanna be the next shrine maiden?"

The offer was made so casually, it took Reimu a few seconds to realize the impact of what she'd heard. She stiffened up in surprise when it clicked, but tried her best to dampen it. The past few months had taught her a lot about keeping her expectations low. "H-huh? Why?"

“Well,” Konomi said, and leaned back, while one hand absently fished in the bag for another bun. “ _I_ need to start training a new shrine maiden, and _you_ need somewhere to live, right?”

Reimu had had a few seconds to consider the offer, but was still halfway bewildered. She nibbled away at the last of her meat bun as she tried making sense out of all of this. “Why me, though? I'm just a kid..."

“Uh, well. I kind of...” The shrine maiden rubbed at the back of her neck bashfully. “Jeez, I suck at this stuff. I dunno? I wasn't even as big as you when my mom died. I know how much it sucks, and I wanna help if I can." Reimu flinched, and as her eyes watered, the shrine maiden powered on. “Look, I'm not gonna lie. I can't offer you much. There's a lot of other people who could give you better. If you say yes, you're pretty much fighting youkai for the rest of your life. But you'll have a roof over your head, you won't go hungry, and nobody from the village is gonna tell you how to live. That's worth somethin', right?”

“I don't know...” Reimu shrank back into her hiding spot, and tightened her grip on her knees, hugging them to her chest. “I don't know how to fight stuff.”

Konomi leaned in, with one corner of her mouth tugging up in a vicious grin. “Don't you worry about _that_.”

* * *

Behind the shrine, around the pond, Konomi maintained a garden. It was an eclectic mix of vegetables and flowers, arranged without any apparent order, and now, the far end had been turned into a haphazard training ground. Half a dozen rice straw bales had been scattered around for targets. After days of practice, they were heavily chipped and missing chunks in places.

At the moment, though, they weren't needed. Konomi had pushed one over, and was now sitting cross-legged atop it. She almost could have passed for a wise hermit, if she'd bothered to brush her hair this morning, and if the bale she was sitting on didn't have a paint-dribbled sign on the side announcing it to be a 'YOKEI.'

"Alright," she said. "Uh, this time, try to relax and trust that the kami will keep you up, okay? The orb'll do all the work. You just need to let it. Got it?"

"I think so..." Reimu looked down to the yin-yang orb that Konomi had handed her, now laying in the weedy grass. "Do I do it now?"

"Yeah, give it a shot."

Reimu nodded and took a deep breath, then tried to follow the routine they'd been practicing. She crouched down and laid a hand on the orb, mentally beseeching the shrine's kami to come to her aid. After a short wait, it levitated upward, wobbling side to side. She took a cautious step back to give it room, and it rose to about waist height before it started to drift around her. The orb that Konomi had kept was orbiting her waist in a precise circle, exuding force and intimidation by its mere presence. Reimu's, on the other hand, was meandering through a sloppy ellipse. She took another step, and was relieved to see that the orb followed her.

"Yeah, yeah, that's the stuff. Try to relax and not think about it, okay? It'll do its thing, you just need to worry about yours."

"Right..." Reimu closed her eyes. She tried not to picture what would happen if the orb stopped hovering and fell on her foot. The thing felt like it was made out of solid rock.

"Deep breaths and stuff. Yeah. You're doing pretty good. Yeah." Reimu could hear Konomi slide off the bale and walk around behind her. "Alright, you're not thinking about the orb?"

The question, of course, made Reimu think about the orb again. She shoved the thought from her mind. "I guess."

"Now try flying. This time, try not to, like, tell yourself you're gonna fly, but just... fly. Kinda like you walk, right? You never think, 'I'm going to walk now.' You just, uh, _do_ it. That make sense?"

"Not really."

"Well, give it a shot anyways."

Reimu huffed, but tried her best anyway. She clenched her eyes more tightly, and tried to figure out how to slide the hint to her subconscious. _Flying. Up. The feeling of the ground falling away beneath her feet._ She pictured herself floating away like an untethered balloon, briefly panicked, and recentered herself. Instead, she tried to think of how it felt to float in water. Except in air, she guessed. _Flying flying up, flying flying up. Floating._

"Hey," Konomi said softly. "Open your eyes."

Reimu did. The entire world looked wrong, and she quickly realized that it was because her viewpoint was way, way too high. Looking down, she could see her feet dangling in the air, with the grass a good half-meter past them. The orb still wobbled around her like a drunken moon. She gave one foot a cautious wiggle in the air, reassuring herself that there was no ground touching it.

And, at that slight bit of effort, her focus was lost. Reimu fell, and had the briefest sensation of weightlessness before Konomi caught her by her armpits. "You did it!" she shouted, and tossed Reimu back into the air.

Reimu rebounded with a yelp, then landed a meter away. As she stumbled to a stop, she heard the orb thud to the ground behind her. "I was flying..." she said, with a growing grin of incredulous realization. "I was flying!"

"Sure were. Not bad for a newbie. Took me forever to get that far," Konomi said, as she settled back onto the rice bale. With a flick of her hand, she beckoned the orbs up to rest in her lap. "That's enough for today, don'tcha think? Good job, though."

Reimu took a cautious step, like she was afraid that she might float off into space. Finding that she was still anchored to the ground, she relaxed and took a seat. "It was kind of scary."

"You'll get better at it."

"What if I fall?"

"I'll stick close to catch ya while you're learning. You'll be fine. A few weeks of this and we'll have you flying all over the courtyard like a damn crow."

"I guess." Just the thought of flying around everywhere like Konomi did made Reimu queasy. She leaned forward to look at the orbs. "How do they even work...?"

"Huh?" Konomi followed Reimu's gaze downward. "Oh. I don't really know, myself. I guess the kami does it."

"You _guess_?"

"It's something like that. The kami lives in the orbs, or blesses them or something." Konomi's voice had a definite defensive edge to it, but she seemed to realize it wasn't a very satisfying explanation. She grabbed one of the orbs and tossed it into the air with a flick of her wrist. It landed in her palm with the slap of stone on flesh. After a few thoughtful cycles of this, she said, "When my mom died... I was pretty little. Way younger than you. Some of the ladies from the village used to come up to bring me food and stuff, make sure I took a bath sometimes, but they didn't really know nothin' about the shrine. I kinda had to figure it out as I go."

"Oh." Reimu glanced back at the shrine. The thought that a kami actually lived there was nothing she'd ever really considered. "That sounds hard."

"Eh, I've managed to keep the place running so far." Konomi caught the orb, one final smack of stone on flesh, and dropped it with the others in her lap. "The way I see it... The way I see it, if the kami isn't happy with how I'm doing things, they could speak up. If they're powerful enough to let me fly around and shoot youkai, they oughta be able to do that much, you know?"

"I guess that makes sense."

Konomi gave a decisive nod at that, seemingly satisfied with the conclusion. "Yeah? I like to think so. Everybody in the village acts like they could do better, but I don't see none of them lining up for the job." She trailed off with a sigh, and after a few seconds had passed, forced a smile and slapped the side of the bale. "Anyway, that's enough whinin' from me. C'mon, it's getting close to dinner time. Let's pick some stuff and get to work."

* * *

The occasional breeze shook the shrine, sending gentle creaks and groans through the structure. Outside, a single cricket was chirping out the time. Beyond that, no matter how much Reimu strained, she couldn't hear a single sign of life. It was like all of Gensokyo had improbably decided to go to bed with the sunset.

It didn't make the wait any easier to bear. She did what she could to keep her mind off the worry, tidying up the main room and then putting obsessive attention into brewing a pot of tea, but it was no use. Every sound outside the shrine made her freeze and listen. Every distant wolf howl was a youkai announcing a kill, and every rustle of the trees outside was a corpse plummeting to the ground.

When the noise she was waiting for came, though, it was unmistakable. Something landed on the front steps of the shrine, fast and heavy, followed by a few unstable steps. Reimu jerked upright, her eyes fixated on the door. Something thumped against it, and she shifted her position, preparing to jump to her feet if something burst in. Another thump against the door. Reimu patted across the floor until her hand closed around the handle of her gohei. Something dragged across the wall, and the door jolted in its frame before finally sliding open.

The silhouette in the doorway looked like something out of a horror story at first. The candles and lanterns she'd scattered around the shrine lit it irregularly from half a dozen directions, displaying the figure only in fragments: one eye here, a streak of blood there. They took another step forward, and only then were they illuminated enough for Reimu to recognize Konomi.

Now that Reimu could get a good look at her, she could understand why she was so late getting home. One of her sleeves was missing, and the other had jagged claw gashes across it, which continued in a bloody stripe down the front of her skirt. A few smaller rips and scratches marred the rest of her outfit, and the fingernails of one hand had been worn down to jagged, bloody stumps. One side of her skirt hanged heavy, glistening with sticky, cooling blood.

Panic and fear rushed through Reimu. She hurried forward to help, only to flinch back when Konomi slumped unceremoniously to the floor. “Are you okay?!”

“Not as bad as it looks,” Konomi croaked. She trembled briefly, then managed to roll herself over onto her side. “Water?”

The word managed to pierce through Reimu's fear. “R-right!” she stammered, and ran to the kitchen. She returned a minute later with a just-filled jug, water sloshing out of the mouth as she bounded through the room, and offered it over.

“Thanks.” Konomi pushed herself to kneeling with a pained grunt. After tugging her remaining sleeve off, she threw it to the ground, pulled the neck of her outfit down to reveal a few gashes across her shoulder, and started pouring water across her wounds. The first touch of it made her flinch, but she kept at it. Reimu watched, transfixed, until she realized that she should be helping. She hurried out of the room again, and returned with a clean cloth, Konomi nodded her thanks and wiped it over one of the cuts, shivering in pain.

It wasn't the first time that Reimu had seen her like this. She went out patrolling for youkai almost every night. Most of the times, she returned with nothing but stories of scaring weaker youkai away from the village. Occasionally, she came back with a few new bruises, but gloating over a victory.

And every now and then, there was a night like this. It wasn't the first time that she'd staggered home covered in injuries, and Reimu was beginning to suspect that it wouldn't be the last. “Shouldn't you go to a doctor if you're hurt that bad?”

“Nnh.” Konomi gave the cloth a few last dabs at one of her wounds, then dropped it to the floor. Where it had been pure white before, it was now covered in starbursts of blood and smears of dirt. She took a few deep gulps from the jug, then crawl-scooted over until she could collapse on her futon. “No doctors awake in the village this late. Probably run scared if they saw me like this, anyway.”

Reimu nodded and looked over her. Now that Konomi had cleaned up her wounds, they looked strangely sterile, little red glistening crescents and lines, with the skin around them wiped clean of the sweat and grime that was clinging to the rest of her. "Does it hurt?"

"Nngh. Some. Nothin' I haven't been through before,” Konomi mumbled. "Just need some rest. Don't worry about me."

“Right...” Reimu wasn't so sure about that, but she kept it to herself. When it seemed like the shrine maiden was going to doze off, she gathered up the cloth and her discarded clothes. She was almost to the door when she hesitated, looking thoughtfully down at the pile of bloody rags in her arms. “... hey, Konomi?”

“Yeah?”

“Why don't you just quit?”

Konomi didn't reply. Not immediately, at least. Right when Reimu was starting to think that she might have offended her, she answered. "My mom did it 'til the day she died. Her mom too," she said, without opening her eyes. “All the way back as far as anybody knows, pretty much. She would've been pissed if I gave up this easy. Besides, somebody's gotta, don't you think?”

“But isn't it scary...?”

“If the youkai could just do whatever they'd want,” Konomi said, “they'd eat every human in Gensokyo in a few days. I've seen them when they're eating. It's just like normal food to them. Diggin' through people's guts like it was a bowl of rice or something. Nobody should have to die like that.”

Reimu's stomach churned. Before she could reply, Konomi pushed herself up on one elbow, meeting her eyes from across the room. “I know what you're thinking. 'Once I'm the shrine maiden, that's gonna happen to me.' Right?”

The thought had crossed Reimu's mind a few times. It still seemed like a distant, far-off prospect—years until Konomi said she'd be old enough to even think about going into an actual fight—but the idea frightened her sometimes. “A little,” she admitted.

Konomi nodded to herself, satisfied. “You don't got anything to worry about. You've caught the kami's eye or somethin'. It'll be a piece of cake for you.”

“Really...?”

“Yeah. I'm not very good at this stuff, really. You, though, you're a natural. By the time you're all trained, there won't be nothing to fight, because all the youkai will runnin' scared.” Konomi let herself slump to the floor again, but this time, she gave a satisfied-sounding sigh. "Anyway, you shouldn't stay up half the night. Stunt your growth or something. Stop worrying about me and go get some rest.”

Reimu hesitated, but Konomi really did seem to be feeling a bit better. At least, her breaths had settled into a regular pace, and she was no longer trembling in pain between them. It wasn't like there was anything else productive that she could do here, anyway. “You're the one who kept me up this late in the first place,” she said with a huff, unable to put much force into it. “... but good night.”

* * *

After years of living at the shrine, Reimu had mostly adjusted to its yearly rhythms. The autumn was a time to relax, recovering from the summer and preparing for the winter. The winter was a slow, dead season, with only the excitement of New Year's to punctuate it. The spring was busier, with the youkai trying to fill their bellies after a long winter.

Summer was always a frantic rush. This year's was almost over, but so far, Konomi had spent twenty or so entire nights fighting youkai until dawn, come home injured a few times, and gotten into one fight that had left her too shaken to talk about it even now. Sometimes it felt like all she did was hunt youkai at night and sleep during the day to recover. It left Reimu attending to the day-to-day affairs of the shrine herself, keeping the place swept and cooking most of the meals.

It usually meant that they didn't get to attend any of the Obon celebrations. Reimu had gotten used to watching them from afar, seeing the lights of the festival go on late into the night, with a fireworks show that was visible throughout most of Gensokyo at the end. So, when Konomi had made the offer at dinner--"Hey, I think I'll be okay to take a night off. Wanna go down into the village?"--Reimu hadn't hesitated.

What she hadn't counted on was Konomi bringing the pouch that held every yen the two had to their name. She kept its cord looped around one side of her belt, while a sake jug dangled from the other. Reimu wasn't sure which one she was partaking in more liberally. Over the course of the night, she'd already refilled the jug once, but she'd also bought a pinwheel for Reimu, masks for the both of them, paid for half a dozen games of chance, and had started in on food. Now, Reimu was watching as Konomi handed over a wince-inducing amount of money to a man in a stall, and received what seemed like a pretty small amount of food in return. She turned around, holding a paper basket with half a dozen dango skewers sticking up out of it. Snatching one up, she thrust it in Reimu's face. "Here...!"

"Um, thanks." Reimu took the thing and took a curious bite of the tip, while Konomi watched expectantly. She hadn't actually heard what flavor she'd ordered, but it had a nice sweet and salty balance, with some sesame seeds adding texture. "... that's pretty good."

"Yeah, isn't it?" Konomi plucked one out of the basket for herself, and ate up the topmost dumpling in a single bite. Chewing it, she set out toward the other booths, walking with an unmistakable drunken swagger. Ahead of them, villagers glanced at the pair with recognition and gave them a wide berth. Konomi didn't seem to notice. Already, she was looking off in the distance. "Ya... Y-ya... ki... That one over there's yakitori, right?!"

"Hmm?" Reimu took another bite of her own and looked up. "Oh, yeah, that's what the sign says."

"Tha'ss our next stop," Konomi slurred happily.

Reimu gave her a sidelong glance, but allowed this for now. Only after they'd walked a bit farther, and she'd finished off her dango, did she say, "Is it really okay to spend all of our money like this, though?"

"Eh?" Konomi kept looking ahead, plucking two dumplings off a skewer at once, then washing them down with a swig of sake. "Well, I mean. Sometimes you've gotta..." She trailed off, and gave the skewer a didactic waggle in the air. "Sometimes ya gotta unwind 'n relax 'n all that, right?"

"It's pretty nice," Reimu said, and reached over for another skewer. She took the opportunity to eye the coin purse and perform a bit of mental arithmetic. Konomi never had been good with numbers, so Reimu had been handling most of the shrine's finances lately. She knew that they'd had enough for about two weeks of food when they'd left, and the purse looked like it had grown a lot lighter in the meantime... yeah, that sealed it. “But don't you think that's enough for tonight, though?” she said, and lifted the purse from Konomi's belt as subtly as she could.

“Aw, c'mon.” Konomi made a drunken grab for it, but Reimu snatched it away, and she was left scowling. “... that bad, huh?”

“Only if you want to be able to afford dinner next week.”

“Fiiiine...”

The two walked in silence for a short while, and much to Reimu's relief, walked past the yakitori and out of the portion of the festival grounds that had been set aside for food. Konomi was the one to break the silence. “It's just that, I was thinkin'. I was thinkin'...” She trailed off, and took a long pull from the jug as she gathered her thoughts. She gasped at the end, and for a moment, Reimu thought she was going to throw up. “Was thinking that your training's goin' pretty good, don't you think?”

“Sure, I guess..”

“So... before long. 'nother year or two, maybe. You'll be ready to start hunting youkai.”

“.. oh.”

“So I just thought... just thought it'd be nice if you got to do, you know. Normal kid stuff before then. Not gonna have many chances once you start hunting.” Konomi snorted. “Not like I'd know what normal kids do.”

Reimu ate a few dumplings as she considered how to reply to that. “I'm thirteen,” she finally said. “I'm not really a kid anymore.”

“Close enough.” Konomi's mood had gone rapidly downhill. She scowled at her now-empty skewer and flung it back over her shoulder. “Nothing fun about hunting youkai. 's my fault you got pulled into this. Least I can do is keep you comfortable as possible until you start.”

Reimu frowned as she considered this, finishing off the last of the dumplings. When they were gone, she fidgeted with the skewer, turning it over in her fingers. “You worry too much.”

“Do I?”

“You've always said I'm way stronger than you, right?” Reimu dropped the skewer back into the basket, and rested her hands behind her head. “Youkai hunting will be a piece of cake for me.”

“Heh. That so?”

“Yeah. Like you've always said, they're all going to run away when they hear I'm coming, right?”

Konomi looked over to Reimu, letting out a snort of disbelief. When Reimu didn't budge, it rolled onward, becoming a low chuckle in the back of her throat. Soon, she broke into raucous laughter, bent over double and shuddering so hard that Reimu thought she might fall over. Reimu took a step back, watching with a wary eye, while acutely aware of how many other festival-goers were staring at the display. Konomi's laughter only slowly died down, and in the aftermath, she was left coughing. She shot Reimu an unsteady grin as she recovered. “Always knew I picked the right girl for the job.”

“Yeah, you did. With me around, an old lady like you might as well just stay in bed all night.”

“Heh. Maybe I will,” Konomi said, and grabbed Reimu's wrist. “... but first, I still wanna get yakitori.” Grinning, she dragged Reimu back toward the food stalls, before she could even think to resist. Despite Reimu's best efforts, they ended up roaming the festival until the night was dark and the stalls were closing up.

The next week, they went fishing to make up the shortfall in their food budget.

The week after, Konomi went for a routine youkai hunt. When she hadn't returned by the next afternoon, Reimu started worrying.

* * *

Konomi's grave was in Muenzuka.

It was the traditional resting place for the Hakurei shrine maidens. They had their own corner set aside, with long orderly line of grave markers documenting the lineage all the way back to the days before the Barrier. Down the hill from them were the graves of other individual youkai hunters, and then a small field dedicated to outside world humans.

The humans of Gensokyo found it handy to keep everybody who had been killed by youkai in one place, because they had a habit of coming back as ghosts.

Reimu had brought incense, but it had burnt down to nothing in the hours that she'd been here. Now, the shadows were getting long as the sun sank toward the horizon. She knew that she should have been preparing to leave before it got dark, but still she stayed rooted in place, staring at the spot where the grave marker met the ground.

It was a voice from behind that finally interrupted her. “It has been a year, hasn't it?”

Reimu looked over her shoulder. A woman was standing there: blonde, with striking violet eyes. “Yeah,” she said, and took a closer look. The woman was wearing a delicate-looking violet dress and carrying a parasol, both of which looked very out of place, considering that one had to walk for kilometers through the Forest of Magic to reach this place. "Did you know her? I don't remember seeing you around the shrine.”

Without giving an answer, the woman crouched in front of the grave and laid a single flower—had she had one in her hands before?—at the base. She bowed her head in silence, and Reimu watched, too curious to leave.

“You've made quite a name for yourself, in only a year,” the woman said after a few minutes, without looking up. “With the way you handled that vampire, most of the youkai are too frightened to even consider causing trouble.”

“Good. They should be.”

“A very short-sighted opinion.”

As subtly as she could, Reimu touched her fingers to the spot where she packed her sealing ofuda, reassuring herself that she hadn't forgotten them. “Did you come to visit the grave, or are you here to talk to me?”

“Can't it be both?” The woman rose to standing, wearing an insufferable smile. “I do have a proposition for you, though, if you will hear me out.”

"... are you even going to introduce yourself first?"

"Call me," the woman said, "an interested party."

“Then I'm not agreeing to anything.”

“Even if I say that it will make battles between humans and youkai end in far less bloodshed?”

“Not interested. I haven't had any problems with youkai yet.” Reimu turned toward the path leading back to the village, making a show of getting ready to leave.

“Oh, yes, the bloodline is unusually strong in you.” Reimu stayed facing away, but she could hear the woman step closer. “But consider your predecessor. Certainly you've seen how the current arrangement works out for those who are less powerful than you.”

Reimu stiffened up, and one hand clenched into a fist. "Leave her out of this."

"She's precisely the topic at hand, though. It's a unique folly of humans to--" Reimu whirled on the woman, only to find her no longer standing there, and her voice still coming from behind her. "--believe that issues can be divorced from the people they effect."

"I don't want to hear it!"

Reimu spun toward the woman's voice again, this time preparing to whip out her ofuda, but again found herself looking at empty air. Her voice continued, unfazed. "I have witnessed the deaths of most of the Hakurei shrine maidens.” The voice grew closer and quieter. “How would you, Reimu, like to be one of the first to not die screaming in terror?"

"Sh-shut up!"

Silence followed. Reimu dared to hope that the woman really had taken the hint and left, but she wasn't about to look over her shoulder to find out. While she'd remained calm during her earlier vigil at the grave, now her eyes teared up. The only thing stopping her from dabbing them dry was that she didn't want to give the woman the satisfaction.

"I'll leave this here," the woman's voice said, after almost a full minute of silence. Her voice had a strange detached quality now, like it was speaking right into Reimu's head. Something pressed into her hand. "Please, give it some consideration. I'll be in touch."

Whatever it was, Reimu wanted to throw it to the ground and stomp on it. Against her better judgment, she raised it for a look. An envelope. Her vision was blurring, but she could just barely make out the tidy writing on the front: " _Spell Card Rules – Draft."_


	4. Marisa

The Kirisame Shop was Marisa's whole world. She'd spent her earliest years underfoot as her father attended to customers. She'd learned to walk among its cluttered aisles of secondhand furniture, read her first words from cramped ledgers and used books. When she was a little older, Dad had started sending her on occasional errands— _Take this letter to the Motoori household. Help Mister Umemoto load these clothes into his cart._

She knew its interior better than she did her own bedroom. Rows of furniture and smaller outdoor items dominated the center. Among the edges were shelves, racks, baskets, and stands, holding everything imaginable: clothes, hats, books, knick-knacks, tools, bows, plates and bowls, toys, decorative scrolls, fishing rods, carvings. Each and every one had been cleaned and repaired under her father's direction, and he knew what every piece was for and who he'd bought it from. Sometimes, on slow days, they'd make a game out of it, with her fetching the oldest, strangest items she could find and challenging him to tell her about them. The vase with the herons on it had come from Mister Kitaoka, who had needed the money after running up some gambling debts. The lacquered pipe had come from Miss Hayashi, who couldn't bear holding onto the reminder of her now-dead husband. Every item in the shop had a story, and every story about Marisa's life involved the shop.

Which was only one reason it hurt so much to see it burning to the ground.

Word spread quickly in the human village, especially word of something as momentous as a fire. They'd barely managed to get out of the building before the first people arrived. The minutes afterward were a blur, nothing but smoke and Dad shouting and the impossible heat. An impromptu firefighting brigade had formed, hauling water from one of the massive tubs that dotted the city streets for exactly this purpose. Even more people were just there as spectators, gathered around to watch the shop burn.

It was one of the few two-story buildings in the village. Dad had always been proud of that. Now, the top floor was slumping down, with some critical support burnt away. Her bedroom was in the nicest spot, overlooking the street, and now she could see flames flickering inside of it, while smoke poured out the window. She hoped that everything would be okay. She hoped so hard.

It was a greedy hope, though. She hoped that her things wouldn't get burnt up, sure. Mostly, though, she hoped that she wouldn't be responsible for destroying everything her family owned.

It had started with a spark.

A little one, a barely-perceptible speck of heat and light in her palm. It had winked out in a few seconds, quickly enough that she almost convinced herself she'd imagined it. Even that had taken weeks of practice, long nights of sitting up late and practicing hand motions that she got from a book.

The book had come from a crate in the unsorted purchases in the shop's backroom. Normally, non-fiction books had trouble holding her attention, but this one was full of elaborate diagrams and vivid illustrations. Only after flipping through it for ten minutes had she realized what the diagrams were _for_ , and by then, her curiosity was already hooked. She'd read the entire thing in a single night, even though she had to sound out half of the words. The next morning, while Dad was busy downstairs in the shop, she'd sat in her room and tried to follow the book's instructions.

Two weeks after her first spark, she'd managed fire, little puffs of flame that flickered in and out of existence above her hand.

Over the next week, she'd practiced making fire until she'd perfected it, able to make great bursts of flame with a moment's work.

Today, she'd pulled off her best trick yet. She'd made a roiling ball of fire, a bit smaller than an apple. With a flick of her wrist and a push from her mind, she could control it. She figured out how to make it hover through the air. She figured out how to make it bounce from palm to palm, like a hopping frog.

Excited, she'd run downstairs to show it to Dad. At the foot of the stairs, she'd tripped and dropped her fire on the floor.

The fire had spread across the tatami mat like water spilled from a bucket. It had climbed up the walls. It had filled the room with smoke and crackling noise, and it had blocked her from being able to reach the door. The noise had been enough to draw Dad, who'd scooped her up in his arms and rushed outside.

As soon as he'd sat her down, Dad had gone back into the building, barreling into the smoky interior through the rear entrance. The fire brigade had shouted at him, telling him to stay out. He hadn't listened. Marisa wasn't as worried about this as she might have been. Dad was tall, the tallest person she'd seen in her entire life. A lifetime of packing furniture and making deliveries had made him strong, too. Dad was the biggest, strongest person around, and she was pretty sure nothing could hurt him. That was just common sense.

The fire was getting worse, though. A loud splintering noise came from deep within the house. The upper floor sagged further with a loud groan of straining wood. The crowd backed away, but Marisa was rooted to the spot, watching her world burn.

A nearby door rattled in its frame, slammed by something from inside. It rattled again. It flew open.

For a moment, Marisa couldn't see anything through the doorway. The interior was nothing but smoke, with the occasional distant orange glow to hint at the still-burning fires. A silhouette appeared in it, and Dad stumbled out.

He definitely looked worse for the wear. His skin was grimy and glistening with sweat. Under one arm, he was carrying a sturdy metal container. Marisa wasn't sure what it was called, but she knew what it was. It was the box where Dad kept all the money. Under his other arm, he had a pile of stuff, wrapped up in a big piece of cloth. The cloth wasn't familiar to Marisa, and the objects took her a few seconds to recognize: a few books, a rolled-up calligraphy scroll, a jewelry box. Mementos of Mom.

He staggered out the door, and was barely a meter away from it when he slumped down to his knees, gasping for air.

"Dad!" Marisa ran over to him, her little feet pounding on the packed dirt. She still had the magic book in her arms, but shifted it to one hand so she could throw the other around his neck in a hug.

With a grunt, Dad released the strongbox. It landed heavily on the ground, and he looped his massive arm around her in a hug. He smelled like smoke, and he was still struggling to catch his breath. She could feel his heart pounding through his chest.

Something about that was even more terrifying than watching the house burn. She'd never seen Dad scared before.

"I-I didn't wanna... it wasn't supposed to...!"

It was all that Marisa got out before she broke down with a loud wail, sobbing against him. Dad pulled her in more tightly, running his fingers through her messy hair. “It's okay,” he said. “It's alright. We both got out, and that's what matters.”

"Hey, Kirisame!" The voice came from the crowd behind them, and Marisa dimly recognized it as one of the more gossipy village elders. "What happened here?!"

Dad gave her one last pat on the head and pulled away. Marisa reluctantly pulled her arm free and rubbed at her eyes with her hand. "Nothing that concerns you."

"Eh, damn near would have burnt down half the town if it'd spread."

Dad reached down, and before Marisa realized what was happening, he grabbed her magic book and tugged it out of her arms. With a frown, he inspected the cover, then tucked it away in the pile of things he'd fished out of the fire. 

Marisa watched this, still sniffling, but Dad cut off her protests by ruffling her hair with a massive hand. "It was an accident," he announced, louder this time. "Nothing that will happen again."

* * *

The shop had come back stronger than ever after the fire, like a forest. Dad had taken its near-destruction as a challenge. He'd invested every yen he had into rebuilding it. He'd taken out loans from trustworthy and untrustworthy sources alike. Six months after it opened its doors again, he'd taken on his first apprentice. A few months later, he'd added another. In his obsession, he put every ounce of himself into the reopened shop. Within a year, business was better than ever. Two years, and people were starting to whisper that he'd made a pact with a youkai for his success.

The shop had recovered. Everything had turned out okay. And yet...

And yet, Marisa had never seen a trace of her book again after that night. When she'd first dared to mention magic again, months later, Dad had ended the conversation on the spot. When the store had opened again again, he'd taken to screening the new acquisitions personally, weeding out every book with a trace of arcane information. Every item in the shop, down to the smallest bauble, got vetted for magic. He'd taken on a half-youkai apprentice just for that. It was like he planned to keep her safe from magic by making her world one where it no longer existed.

What he hadn't counted on was just how hard-headed a young girl could be.

Today's search had taken her into the bad parts of the village, crammed up against the outer wall where nobody had to acknowledge them. There were entire small districts there, of slaughterhouses, moneylenders, gambling parlors, and fortunetellers, everything polite society didn't want to be associated with.

It wasn't the sort of place that solitary young girls visited very often. She'd hurried down the street, trying to look confident even as she recited incantations in her head, primed to shoot fire on a moment's notice. Everybody she'd passed had followed her with their eyes. Every shopkeeper she'd talked to had commented on how strange it was for her to visit them. It had taken hours to find a shop that even carried legitimate goods, and even longer to find one that would sell to her.

She'd found one, though. It had taken all of her savings, plus a little more that she'd borrowed from the shop's cash box. (Dad didn't check the ledgers for another four days, plenty of time to make up the difference.) In return, she'd gotten two books on magic. Dusty, battered things, probably passed through a dozen hands before they'd been pawned. She'd seen magic books for sale before, pretty, crisp-covered things on the shelves of the village's more respectable bookshops... but the men running the village's more respectable bookshops knew Dad, and they'd tell him in an instant if his daughter came around trying to buy such things. The man she'd bought these from had just been happy for the money, and Dad wouldn't listen to him even if he did say anything.

She couldn't resist the urge to leaf through the books as she walked, even though she'd skimmed them half a dozen times in the store before settling on them. One was an intermediate primer on heat magic. Its easiest spells were significantly harder than anything from her few other books, but that was good, she'd decided. She never stopped experimenting with it, even after losing her book. Long nights of crouching in the corner of her room with her door shut and sparks dancing between her fingertips. It had been hard, but she'd taught herself a lot of things from first principles, and had an entire notebook filled with her discoveries. The terms used in the new book didn't immediately make sense to her, but a lot of them seemed to be describing things she'd already figured out on her own. She was confident that she could master it in weeks.

The other book had been a bit of an impulse buy. It was an overview of alchemy. She didn't know a single thing about alchemy. It had a lot of neat pictures inside, though, of fancy-looking apparatuses for running experiments. It had been too interesting to just let it sit there on a shelf, even if she wasn't sure she could hide that kind of stuff in her room as easily as a bunch of books.

By the time she got back to her own neighborhood, night was falling. She reluctantly closed the books to keep an eye on her surroundings, but it didn't look like it was necessary. The shop came into view, and its windows were dark. She breathed a sigh of relief. That meant the employees had all gone home for the day, and with any luck, Dad would already been in bed.

She still took precautions. Circling around the shop, she eased the back door open and slipped inside. The interior was dark, but she knew her way through it by heart. She crept across the room, the books tucked against her chest with one hand while the other patted her surroundings for guidance. Around the stacks of pending deliveries, past the clothes racks, approaching the staircase...

“Marisa?”

Dad's voice came down the stairwell, and she froze mid-step. Above her, the ceiling creaked. She'd been up late often enough to recognize the noise: He was getting out of bed. “Yeah, it's me,” she called back up the stairs.

Creaking footsteps made their way toward the staircase, and Marisa panicked. Coming home late was one thing. Coming home late from a day on the bad side of town with illicit books was another entirely. Frantically, she patted at the shelves around her, looking for a hiding spot.

“Where have you been?”

“Uh! Just, uh, out on a walk!”

"A walk." Dad didn't sound like he believed it for a second. His voice was coming down the stairs now. "To where?"

"Just... out!" Marisa's searching hand found a shelf with some empty room on it. She shoved the contents aside as quietly as she could and thrust her books behind them, then tugged a pot back into place in front of them. It wasn't the best hiding spot, but it would have to do for now.

And she finished getting it into place just as light came down the stairway. Dad rounded the corner, carrying a lantern. As he stepped into view, he raised it and scrutinized her. “You were supposed to be helping out today. Tadashi had to do all the deliveries by himself. I'm going to ask you again, and this time I want to hear the truth. _Where were you?_ ”

Marisa flinched. Dad sounded like he wasn't going to buy the innocent act, and she didn't feel like she should press her luck. “I... was outside the walls,” she said, and her mind scrambled to flesh out the lie. “The Iwata kid was missin', and I thought I'd help look for her. Somebody said they'd seen her heading toward the main gate, and, um, it was gettin' pretty late, so I thought I'd go out to make sure she wasn't out there, and—“

“So that the youkai could eat both of you, instead of just her? Did you ever stop to think about your own safety?”

Marisa didn't have the heart to tell him that she'd been outside of the village walls half a dozen times in the past year, and much farther than she would've gone if she'd actually been searching for a kid. It was hard to practice shooting fire in the middle of the village. “I... nothing happened. I didn't even see nothin'.”

“I've been worried sick about you.”

“Sorry. Guess it was pretty stupid of me.”

Dad let out a tired grumble and lowered the lantern. "Yes, it was. But I'm glad you made it back okay." His posture softened, but his voice did not. "From now on, if you're going out, I want to know where. Do you understand?"

"I got it, I got it..."

"Good. If you have enough free time to be chasing down every missing kid in the village, maybe you can clean the stockroom tomorrow."

Outwardly, Marisa groaned. Cleaning the stockroom was a tedious, mind-numbing chore that usually took at least ten hours. It was the sort of thing Dad only assigned to employees as a punishment. Inwardly, her dismay was already being drowned out by elation. He hadn't even noticed the books. Sure, tomorrow would suck, but that still left her all night to read, and maybe tomorrow night if she could push herself to stay up even longer...

“I don't want to hear any complaints. Now get to bed.” Dad turned to head back toward his own bedroom, but paused a few steps up the stairway, looking back to her over his shoulder. “Marisa?”

She was so wrapped up in planning out her studies for the night that it took a moment to respond. “Yeah?”

“I mean it. If something happened to you...” He trailed off with a barely-audible sigh. “Just don't go out there again. Good night. Get to bed soon.”

“'night.”

Dad's footsteps creaked back up the stairs, and Marisa waited until they made their way all the way to his bedroom before she dared to check the shelf again. She felt only the slightest pang of guilt as she pulled her books out and hurried to her own bed.

* * *

“Marisa!”

Dad's voice could shake the windows of the building when he really tried, but today, she could barely even hear it over the crowd. Late winter was always a busy time, a brief window where it was warm enough for people to haul carts of stuff to and from the shop, but the farmers weren't yet busy planting their fields. Dad had taken on a few temporary workers to deal with the surge of business, and it still wasn't enough. The shop was hot and crowded, and a line of people extended out the door, all carrying armfuls of stuff to trade in for cash or store credit.

She had to ease her way through the crowd, all elbows and _'scuse me_ s, until she got to the front counter where Dad was standing. “Yeah? What's up?”

In front of him was a crate, from which he was unloading a seemingly-endless series of used clothes, scrutinizing them one by one. He didn't even look up from his work as he spoke. “Mister Fujita brought in some kind of outside world gadget. Take a look at it and make him an offer if it works.”

“Eh? I was gonna work deliveries today. Isn't that kind of thing Rinnosuke's specialty?”

“Rinnosuke is already with somebody.”

Dad's patience already sounded strained. She wasn't about to make him say it twice. “Right, got it!”

It was, fortunately, the beginning of the end. It was getting late, and the shop kept strict hours. Fifteen minutes from closing time, the employees started herding customers out the door, promising those who hadn't gotten in that they could come back tomorrow. It was followed by the usual closing-up activities: sweeping the floor, carrying the new purchases to the stockroom and sorting them. By the time Dad started counting down the till, the employees were trickling out the back door, and Marisa took it as her own chance to sneak off. She drifted to the backroom and settled down at the break table to experiment with her newest acquisition. It was an oblong, black thing about the size of her thigh, with buttons along the top and two fine grates covering the sides, and no matter how many combinations of buttons she tried, it never seemed to produce any meaningful results. Soon, she was so absorbed in her work that she barely noticed when Dad stepped into the doorway to watch her.

“Is that the thing Fujita brought in?”

“Yeah, it is,” she said distractedly, and flipped it over. There was a little clasp on the back, and undoing it let her open it up to reveal shiny metal cylinders. _Batteries_. She'd known that one before she was ten years old.

“What's it do?”

“Uhm, well. This button here makes this thing open...” She pushed it, and a little hatch on the side folded out to reveal a plastic rectangle inside. She closed the hatch and moved on. “And _this_ button makes it make a real annoying noise.” She pushed the button, and a loud, garbled hiss came from it. “And then there's this little knob that controls how loud it is, in case it wasn't annoyin' you enough, I guess.”

“A radio,” Dad said, and stepped over to inspect the thing himself. He sat down next to her and turned it to face the two of them. It looked absolutely delicate in his hands. “It picks up messages from the air. You turn this knob to pick which ones you want to hear, and the other one controls how loud they are.”

“Huh. Not hearing many messages from it.”

“It's useless,” he agreed, and pushed it back toward her. “How much did you pay for it?”

“I told him five hundred cash, or eight hundred credit.”

Dad gave a nod of approval. “Did he take it?”

“Yeah. Credit. I talked him into buyin' those dishes that've been in the corner forever, those ones from the Ogata place, and he liked 'em so much that he bought the shelf to go with 'em.”

“In the corner...? The green ones?”

She leaned back and interlaced her fingers behind her head, unable to hide her grin now. “Yep.”

“Those things have been sitting there since you were crawling.” A single clipped chuckle came from Dad's throat. “I thought we'd never see the end of them.”

“Yeah, I was glad to see them go. Eyesores.” She eyed the device. _Radio_. She'd have to remember that one. “So it's not a problem that this thing's useless?”

“Hmm? No. I'll have Rinnosuke take a look tomorrow, but I'm sure it's worth more than you paid for it. Somebody will buy it as a conversation piece, if nothing else.” Dad turned the thing over in his hands again, now with a slight smile to his face. “You're becoming quite the saleswoman.”

“Nothin' that anybody else with my natural talent and beauty couldn't've pulled off.”

“How about tomorrow, you work the front counter with me?”

“Eh?” Marisa froze in surprise. The front counter was the most coveted, demanding position in the shop. Coveted because you didn't have to bust your back loading carts and hauling goods all day. Coveted also because the Kirisame Shop was one of the most profitable ventures in the village, and half of Dad's former apprentices had gone on to found stores of their own. Demanding because it meant a full day of dealing with customers, haggling, handling money, and coordinating deliveries. If somebody working deliveries or the storeroom messed up, it would be an inconvenience. If somebody working the front counter messed up, it cost the shop money right out of pocket. “Are you sure...?”

“I am. You're already brighter than half those damn apprentices I've had. You'll do fine.” He sat the radio onto the table and leaned back in his chair, his voice growing more serious. “And you'll be an adult before you know it. It's about time you started learning how everything works, if you're going to run the place yourself someday.”

 _Run the place herself._ It was one of those things that she'd always been aware of, but tried to avoid consciously acknowledging. Dad had inherited the place from his father, who had inherited it from _his_ father. Now... well. Mom hadn't exactly left any other children behind.

She couldn't tell him the truth. That she loved the shop, but she couldn't see herself doing this for the rest of her life. That there was an entire stash of books hidden in her tiny bedroom now, on everything from alchemy to magical constructs, and that she'd attempted every single one. She could shoot a beam of energy that could burn a hole through a tree. She could make a potion that turned her skin as hard as wood, and in fact had done so and needed to hide outside of the village for six hours until it wore off. She could... admittedly, talk a farmer into buying a set of dishes faster than anybody else around, but what was that compared to real, honest-to-goodness _magic_?

“Oh, uh. Wow.” She pushed her face into a smile that she hoped looked far more genuine than it felt. “Yeah, sure. I—we can do that.”

“I know it's a lot of responsibility, but I'm sure you can handle it.” Dad clasped a hand on her shoulder and gave it a warm squeeze, then rose to standing. If he noticed her reluctance, it certainly didn't show. “I'll finish closing up. Take the rest of the day off. You've earned it.”

* * *

The problem with flying, Marisa had reflected many times, was that you were just floating in the air.

To somebody who hadn't flown, It seemed so obvious as to be barely worth mentioning, but it was a serious issue. Like the first time she'd tried to fly farther than a meter or two, when she was ten years old. She'd hovered off the rooftop, after double-checking that she'd done every piece of magic just like the books said to. The magic wasn't the problem, though. She'd expected it to feel like the air was holding her up, but no—it felt like her body itself was floating, suspended by nothing. There was nothing for her to push against, nothing to reassure her senses that she wasn't a split second away from plummeting to the ground. Ironically, her panicked reaction had caused just that. She'd gotten too anxious to concentrate and paid the price in broken bones.

Nowadays, you could barely even notice the limp in her walk unless you were looking for it, but still. The weightlessness thing was an issue, which was why she was so annoyed at herself for taking months to find such an obvious solution.

A broom. The solution was to sit on a broom. Or, well, to sit on _something_ , anyway. It had taken her a few days of experimenting to figure it out. It was some weird experimenting, too—carefully hovering around her room on chairs, cushions, chunks of board. A broom was light enough to not slow her down, while still being solid enough to feel like it was supporting her. By tweaking the spell a bit, she was able to leave gravity tugging her just enough to give her a feeling of weight on it. Sure, it'd mean that she had to fly twice as fast to keep from falling to the ground, and she wasn't going to be able to stop and hover, but she could work out those kinks once she'd gotten used to flying.

That was step one. Step two was actually putting it to a real test, so here she was, standing in the alley behind the shop in the middle of the night, with a broom in her hands. As if that didn't already make her look like enough of a weirdo, she was wearing all black. For stealth, she figured. The last thing she needed was for somebody to look up and spot her, so she could at least try to blend in with the night sky.

After days of working herself up to it, the final approach was underwhelming. She squatted down awkwardly, gripping the broom in both hands and holding it against her butt. She muttered an incantation, long etched into her memory. And, she took off flying like she'd been launched out of a catapult.

"A-aaaaaaaaAAAHAHAHA!" The walls of the alley shot past, and she cackled in glee. She'd shot out onto the main avenue before she remembered that she needed to steer, and just barely managed to pull herself through a broad, sweeping curve. The storefront across the street passed so close that she imagined she could feel it scrape against her feet. She pulled up and broke free of gravity, rocketing into the night sky.

A hundred meters in the air, she leveled off her ascent and tried to remember to breathe. Below her, the entire village was spread out, every corner visible in the light of the full moon. When she'd been young, she hadn't even known what was outside its walls. Over the past few years, she'd gotten used to taking trips outside to sneak in magical training or look for alchemical reagents, and she'd learned just how much larger the world was. Now, from above, the village looked tiny, a little island in the vast ocean that was Gensokyo.

Holding onto the broom for dear life, she flew a slow circle around the village, getting a feel for the simple act of flying. The landscape whipping past below, the wind in her hair, low-flying clouds streaming past her... it was everything she'd hoped for. Trips outside the walls had taken her most of the day before. Now, she could do them in minutes.

Once she'd gotten a little more confident, she swooped down, skimming across the rooftops before pulling herself up in a broad loop, letting out whoops of delight the whole way. She circled back up in a loose corkscrew before diving again, plummeting into an alleyway and dragging the tips of her shoes along the packed dirt before she rose back into the air.

After twenty minutes of experimenting, she was confident that she'd gotten the basics down, and was starting to get too damn cold. Warmer clothes. That was something to keep in mind for next time.

She dropped back down to fly above the rooftops, traveling as leisurely as she could without worrying about falling out of the air. As she approached the shop, she was still beaming with satisfaction, overjoyed at a job well done. She was so wrapped up in the feeling that she was too close to turn back by the time she realized she had an audience. Illuminated in the moonlight, Dad was standing outside the shop, looking right up at her with his arms crossed.

* * *

The Mini-Hakkero, Rinnosuke had called it. He was able to work on magic stuff now that he had his own place, and Marisa had to admit, it was a nifty little gadget. She'd spent hours just admiring it. If she just barely turned it on, it made a beautiful little jewel of a flame. A flick of the wrist and the right command phrases, and she could stoke it into a bonfire that'd level half a forest. Its obtuse corners fit perfectly into her palm, and its metal surface was always comfortably warm. 

She was grateful for that second part, because tonight was freezing cold, and yet here she was, standing outside like a dumbass.

“C'mon, c'mon, hurry up...” she muttered to the little elemental furnace, while rubbing her free hand on her thigh for some warmth. The focused jet of fire coming from the tip was white-hot, but the lock in front of her was made of good quality metal. It was a heavy thing, an imposing-looking padlock that she suspected was kappa work. She'd had to heat it for two minutes before it started glowing, and only now was it showing any signs of melting. When she could wait no longer, she turned off the flame and gave the lock a smack, using the Mini-Hakkero like a hammer. Rinnosuke would doubtlessly disapprove, but it worked. The still-glowing metal of the locking bar bent open, and the lock fell to the ground.

She wasted no time. Stepping carefully around the half-molten metal on the ground, she tugged the door open and stepped inside.

The storage shed was not a glorious place. It sat in the uncertain area that a lot of the space in the shop did, part personal, part business. Half of the contents were family stuff—old things of Mom's that Dad hadn't been able to bear keeping around _or_ throwing away, gear from back when Dad had gone trapping in the winters, old furniture from the house. The other half were items from the shop—dusty tables, boxes of old knick-knacks, old shelves and signs that might be needed again some day.

And sitting front and center, atop a mildewed chair, was the box containing all of Marisa's magical equipment and books. She hurried over and flipped through them, glancing at the titles. All here, it looked like. Now she just had to figure out how to get it onto her broom, and—

“If you're going to be a thief.” Dad's voice came from behind her, and she froze. She could hear him walking closer, his heavy footsteps punctuated by the soft sound of his cane pushing into the snow. The village doc had said there wasn't anything particularly wrong with his back—just the result of a lifetime of lifting heavy boxes and hauling furniture. “You might want to learn how to be quieter at it.”

“It seems to me,” Marisa said, without turning around, “that it's not stealing if the stuff you're taking belongs to you in the first place.”

“Breaking and entering, then.” Dad came to a stop by the entrance. “Where have you been?”

“I've been stayin' with Rinnosuke.”

Silence followed. Marisa kept her back pointedly turned on him. Let him make the first move. She'd played out every way this conversation could go in her head, had a dozen angry counterpoints to anything he could say. Let him give her an excuse to act as angry as she felt.

He didn't, though. After a while passed with no response, she added, “I'm just here to get my things, so if you came out here to stop me, you're out of luck.”

“Nnh.” Dad hobbled into the shack and eased himself down to sit on a table. “And how is a man supposed to stop his daughter, when she can apparently fly and shoot fireballs?”

“Gee, I dunno. You could take all my stuff and threaten to burn it again. Seemed to work pretty good the first time.”

“I was protecting you.”

“Hate to break it to you, but it's been about ten years since the old shop burnt down. I can handle myself now.”

“And your broken bones? Do you think I don't know how those happened?” Dad let out a tired-sounding sigh. Coupled with the way he paused after every sentence, it sounded like his words were weighing him down. “What are you going to do now?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said you aren't coming back. Is that your plan? Live with Rinnosuke forever?”

“That's just temporary. He knows this place out in the woods, I'm gonna fix it up.”

“And then? How will you make money? How will you eat?”

“I'm gonna... I don't know. I'll figure it out.”

'''Figure it out'? You're going to move into the wilderness and play with magic all day, and you'll 'figure it out'?”

“Yeah, that's what I said. I don't see how it's any concern of—“

“It's my concern because you are my _daughter_.” Dad's voice had risen to a booming rumble that shook the air of the room. An earthquake. His voice still shook when he resumed. “Stay here, Marisa. In a few years, you'll be old enough to inherit the shop. Money will never be an issue for you. Forget about this nonsense and come home.”

“Yeah, well,” Marisa said quietly. “Nobody ever asked me if I wanted to run a shop.”

“Yes, instead you want to move to the forest and get yourself killed within a year.”

“Still better than workin' myself to death here!”

Silence followed, and Marisa immediately knew she'd crossed a line. “I have worked,” Dad said, and gave a rap of his cane on the floor for emphasis, “every day since you were born to make the shop successful. Every yen I've earned, it's all been so that you would have a future ahead of you as an adult. And if you think you can turn your back on that—!”

“Then what?!” Marisa whirled on him, the box in her arms. “C'mon, hurry up! My hands are freezing, so _let's get this over with_.”

“If you turn your back on that, then you aren't welcome in this house. Do you understand me? If you walk out that door, don't expect any help if your plans fall through.”

The words cut to Marisa's bone, and she turned her head to hide her reaction. The box tucked under one arm, she fumbled her way toward the door, and didn't stop until her fingers closed around her broom. “Fair enough,” she said, and was proud that her voice barely even shook as she said it. “I got my stuff, so I'm gonna be going now.”

She wasn't sure what she'd expected. For him to rush over and blurt out apologies, beg her to stay, maybe. What he actually said was, “Please be careful, Marisa. I love you.”

Marisa lingered there for a moment, giving a single subtle nod to show that she'd heard him. She stepped through the doorway, slung her broom under herself, and settled the box onto it next to her. And, she took off into the night sky.

Tears stung her eyes the whole way back to Kourindou.


End file.
